


The Next Level

by estella_c



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Post-The Truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:11:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1859265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estella_c/pseuds/estella_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Lonegunmen have one final mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Level

**Author's Note:**

  * For [szgrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/szgrey/gifts).



> Written for The X-Files Secret Santa Community 2013 and originally posted [there](http://xf-santa.livejournal.com/92265.html).

They had gotten home. They couldn't remember how, but they were definitely there. And they weren't going anywhere else.

Byers had removed his jacket and loosened his tie. He had also claimed the thrift-shop recliner. “I worried occasionally that I was becoming agoraphobic. But I wasn't. If I had been, I'd be perfectly contented now.”

“Ain't no use kickin,'” I added as a cracker-barrel philosopher, “until we get some kind of signal.” I had no idea what I was talking about. Atheists believe that death is the end. It was a comforting belief, I recalled, though wrong.

“I'm worried about Jasper,” Langly subject-changed. “We can do without the food and the water, but he's still alive and will be thinning out.”

Jasper was a cat: a male stripey number with no particular glamor but a great profile. I tried to remember how he had joined the menage. He just kind of happened. Cats have that reputation. So we had fed him dry commercial crap and kept the water bowl filled. I caught Langley slipping some beer into it and read him the rules as only a short person can do to a tall, elderly adolescent. 

Mulder had liked Jasper. I always figured that Mulder was secretly a cat person. He had appreciation of natural beauty. I mean, need I mention his partner? The one who had stuck around years longer than were in the plan. He kept fish as a defense against getting a cat, which would take actual nurturing, or at least an occasional ear-fondle.

I miss those ear-fondles. But I reveal too much. 

“That bag of food isn't going to last forever, by which I mean eternally.” That was Byers, moral philosopher. The three of us had discovered that, though dead, we had a little power  
vis-a-vis the natural world. If we worked together, we could tip over a bag of cat nuggets. And through intense concentration I had managed to raise the toilet seat. Ironic, that. I had seldom, in life, needed to lower it. 

“I wish you wouldn't say things like that,” whined Langly. “This canNOT be eternity for us. I mean, we got along okay when we had stuff to investigate and the COMPUTERS were useable, but now we can't even have beer and pizza and there's no zombie channel and no porn and--”

“Don't say it,” I warned.

“Okay, alright, already. Fuck it. No porn and no one needs it anymore.”

“You miss sex?” I snarked. 

Silence.

“Well, I miss the possibility.” 

That was unusually honest for Langly. And then Byers said, “I remember Suzanne. I really wanted to see what it was like with her. Making love. But I think we've moved to the next level.”

“What in hell.”

“Frohike, there was a light in my bedroom.”

“Uh.” 

“It was like a hole in the wall that glowed and wavered. I stared at it until it went away.”

“Dude, do you think it possible you've seen Beetlejuice once too often?”

“I've never seen—what? You mean that dayglo thing with Michael Keaton?”

“And Winona Ryder,” someone sighed. Had to be Langly.

“Whatever happened to Keaton?” I asked, veering manfully from the subject of lights in walls. 

“Retired to Pittsburgh,” answered Langley, which was his way of saying “shut out of showbiz,” Pittsburgh being a punchline town of long standing. The funny thing is that Beetlejuice grew up somewhere around there, so it may have been nothing but the truth.

“You are avoiding the fact,” mourned our-- ohgoodlord-- eternal straight man. “Maybe the light is a signal. Maybe we should be going toward it.”

“Poltergeist,” muttered the other stooge.

“Well, Byers,” I said in my reasonable voice, “if the light is gone we just bump into the wall. Not that banging heads on walls is always a bad option.” Dare I say it? “Or a dead option, heh.” I dare anything. 

Someone turned a key in the lock. The lock in the door. Mulder and Scully came in. This was a miracle on several levels, as all the inner-door safeguards had disappeared. Mulder looked nonshave scruffy and Scully looked like an angel in a leather jacket. Her hair burned so brightly that I had the impression we had been given a second or two of track lighting. They were definitely breathing, but I said, “Where the hell have you been?” anyway.

“They were on the run. Why are they back here?” Langly looked at me accusingly. “Didn't you give him the contacts?”

“I gave him a contact. They probably doubled here to raid the computer. Mulder knows which file has the stuff.”

“This won't take long, Scully. Frohike set up whole new identities for us. We're married now!” 

“Mulder,” she warned, “just because--”

“It's okay. We'll get rings at the next Target.” He was making himself at home at my desk when the guy who really was at home hopped up behind the monitor. Perfect timing.

“A cat,” exclaimed the angel, sounding oddly delighted for someone who had sacrificed her last pet to a large alligator or a legendary sea serpent, your choice. Not his though, poor little beggar. “Oh, the poor guys. They got lonely, I guess.” She ear-fondled dutifully, and I had to watch her partner stroke her beautiful hair back. It did look a little dirty.

“They are so doing it,” Langly guffawed. “Night and day and during rest stops. Nothing sexier than on the run.” 

“Richard, could you please at least pretend...”

“Agent tightass Mulder. I knew all he needed was a little pussy.”

“LANgly--”

“Hell is other people,” Byers intoned. He had wanted to name Jasper Jean-Paul.

Mulder was telling Scully that he had forgotten the cat, a total lie. “His name is Jasper. He was named for Jasper Fforde, a very inventive modern novelist.”

“Well, Mulder,” Scully responded with a bit of bite, “I must catch up on my reading now that we are trying to avoid the people we once worked for.” She was wrapping the cooperative animal in one of my flannel shirts that had avoided laundering for months. She instinctively knew we were not vet, vitamins, carrier types.

Mulder had found, copied, and erased the file. An expert could have brought it up, but it seems no experts were interested in dead conspiracy theorists. A dull finale to an inglorious career.

“Good old Frohike,” Mulder said. “He deserves a medal or a monument. And Langly and Byers. Maybe we could sneak their names onto the Vietnam Memorial. Like anyone would notice.” He didn't sound sorrowful. He sounded suspiciously mellow as he spoke, as though there was another cadre of loyalists who had set him up with a luxury government-proof residence somewhere. Republicans. It was unlikely, but sexual satiation can take the edge off a guy. “We've got to get out. That contact arranged a pick-up in ten, with no room for error.” 

“Don't go yet,” I almost said. Mulder was talking, but Scully was gazing in our direction, smiling and cuddling. Oh, Scully.

But they did, they did go. And as the lock clicked a wash of alien light licked the walls, pale as flame on a sunny day. It wreathed the lair. It did not remind him of Beetlejuice.

“The next--” Byers began, and stopped talking. No one said anything. There was nothing more to say.

**Author's Note:**

> The "him" in the penultimate paragraph seems like a pronoun mistake--and seemed like a mistake to me--but my beta thought it worked in a mysterious, spiritual way. I always obey my beta.


End file.
